Sermons Based on the Lectionary of the Syrian Orthodox Church

3rd Sunday After Denaho (Baptism of Jesus Christ)

Sermon / Homily on St. John 3:1-12

Part 14 - On the Incarnation of the Word

by Athanasius of Alexandria, c. 318.

ß14. A portrait once effaced must be restored from the original. Thus the Son of
the Father came to seek, save, and regenerate. No other way was possible.
Blinded himself, man could not see to heal. The witness of creation had failed
to preserve him, and could not bring him back. The Word alone could do so. But
how? Only by revealing Himself as Man.

1. For as, when the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from
without, he whose likeness it is must needs come once more to enable the
portrait to be renewed on the same wood: for, for the sake of his picture, even
the mere wood on which it is painted is not thrown away, but the outline is
renewed upon it;

2. In the same way also the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the
Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness, and find him,
as one lost, by the remission of sins; as He says Himself in the Gospels: "I
came 238 to find and to save the lost." Whence He said to the Jews also: "Except
239 a man be born again," not meaning, 44 as they thought, birth from woman, but
speaking of the soul born and created anew in the likeness of Godís image.

3. But since wild idolatry and godlessness occupied the world, and the knowledge
of God was hid, whose part was it to teach the world concerning the Father?
Manís, might one say?

But it was not in manís power to penetrate everywhere beneath the sun; for
neither had they the physical strength to run so far, nor would they be able to
claim credence in this matter, nor were they sufficient by themselves to
withstand the deceit and impositions of evil spirits.

4. For where all were smitten and confused in soul from demoniacal deceit, and
the vanity of idols, how was it possible for them to win over manís soul and
manís mindówhereas they cannot even see them? Or how can a man convert what he
does not see?

5. But perhaps one might say creation was enough; but if creation were enough,
these great evils would never have come to pass. For creation was there already,
and all the same, men were grovelling in the same error concerning God.

6. Who, then, was needed, save the Word of God, that sees both soul and mind,
and that gives movement to all things in creation, and by them makes known the
Father? For He who by His own Providence and ordering of all things was teaching
men concerning the Father, He it was that could renew this same teaching as
well.

7. How, then, could this have been done? Perhaps one might say, that the same
means were open as before, for Him to shew forth the truth about the Father once
more by means of the work of creation. But this was no longer a sure means.
Quite the contrary; for men missed seeing this before, and have turned their
eyes no longer upward but downward.

8. Whence, naturally, willing to profit men, He sojourns here as man, taking to
Himself a body like the others, and from things of earth, that is by the works
of His body [He teaches them], so that they who would not know Him from His
Providence and rule over all things, may even from the works done by His actual
body know the Word of God which is in the body, and through Him the Father.